


Morning is Almost Here (let it wait)

by allfireburns



Series: One of Us is Gonna Die Young [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Genre: Character of Color, Coffee, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, POV Third Person, Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-04
Updated: 2009-02-04
Packaged: 2017-10-02 22:24:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allfireburns/pseuds/allfireburns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world actually doesn't end when Torchwood sleeps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Morning is Almost Here (let it wait)

Tosh jolted out of a half doze as Ianto set down a cup of coffee at her elbow. The movement nearly knocked over the mug, but for Ianto, who saw it coming before Tosh had time to process it and swooped in to grab the mug, steadying it until he was certain she wouldn't tip it over.

Tosh winced, and rubbed a hand over her face, taking the mug from Ianto (possibly half to convince him that she, and it, weren't about to fall over). "Thank you. I'm sorry, I must have..."

"Dropped off," he finished for her, with a tight, polite smile. "I didn't mean to wake you."

She shook her head a little to clear it. It didn't work as well as she'd hoped. "No, I..."

Speech, she decided after a minute, when none of the words in her head wanted to come together in the proper order, would have to wait. She took a sip of her coffee. Ianto studied the Rift monitor program running on her computer screen over her shoulder. Finally, she said, "You don't have to stay here. I just wanted to run some tests, nothing I can't do on my own. If you need some sleep..."

"I thought there should be at least two of us here at all times. In case of emergency." Tosh wondered whether that was really an _I thought_ or a _Gwen thought_.

"Jack managed when it was just him," Tosh said, and regretted it the instant she did. Ianto's expression shuttered and closed, and he turned away, moving toward Owen's desk to clear off the small pile of takeout containers and empty mugs Owen tend to leave lying around there. Tosh wasn't even sure she heard him right when he muttered, "Well, we're none of us exactly Jack, are we?"

* * *

Tosh wasn't sure Ianto slept anymore. She would leave the Hub, go home and sleep for a few hours, and when she returned, there would be Ianto, behind his desk in the tourist information centre, or bustling around the Hub, or in Jack's office, having appropriated his computer for one purpose or another. He looked tired, and old, and worn, though impeccably dressed as ever - it was all in his face, the circles under his eyes, the occasional wry and bitter twist of his mouth.

She didn't say anything. It wasn't as if she had a reason to bring it up anyway, when he went about things with the same scrupulous efficiency he always had. With Gwen as distracted as she was, trying to keep them all from getting killed or Cardiff from exploding, Tosh wasn't sure she even noticed the difference.

No matter how late she stayed - well past the time when Jack would have ordered her to go home, were he still around - Ianto was always there, giving her someone to talk to about the Rift predictor program she'd been working on, supplying her with coffee, providing a quiet, muted background noise of soft footsteps and shuffled papers that at least made being in the Hub at night a little less unsettling than it could be if she were alone.

One morning, after they'd all spent the night before tracking what Tosh was certain amounted to an alien _cat_ and come up with nothing to show for it but general exhaustion and a few claw marks apiece, Tosh came in early. Ianto, surprisingly, was nowhere to be seen when she first stepped inside.

She frowned, and reached around behind the desk to hit the button that opened the doors down to the Hub. Ianto did not abruptly appear when she did, as she had half expected him to, so she started down the hall and into the Hub proper, setting her bag down on her desk when she reached it, glancing around...

There were still lights on, here and there, computers neither running programs nor powered down, and... The Hub didn't _feel_ empty. She could usually tell when it was, a change in the air, in the texture of the sounds and the echoes, and it didn't feel empty. She just... couldn't see anyone here.

"Hello? Ianto? ...Gwen?" She didn't bother calling for Owen. After a night like the last, the chances he would be here _early_ seemed very slim.

No one answered, and she frowned, but after a moment sat down at her desk. She had things to do, and she should probably run a background check on the man who'd been keeping the bloody alien cat as a pet in the first place - who looked at a vicious, ill-tempered thing like that and decided it would be a good _pet_? - and sooner or later someone was bound to emerge from the lower levels of the Hub or the briefing room or wherever they'd gone off to...

After a minute, she heard something thump in Jack's office, rather loudly. She jumped, stifled a startled scream, and spun in her chair to face it. Ianto's slightly tousled head popped up from a hole in the floor, and he blinked sleepily at her for a second. "Tosh."

Tosh gave him a small, hesitant smile and didn't ask why he'd been sleeping in the hole under Jack's office. "Ianto! I didn't mean to wake you, I just... wasn't sure if you were actually here..."

He blinked at her a couple more times, thoughts obviously working through a sleep-fogged haze, and then ducked back into the hole long enough to pull on a shirt. He emerged again a moment later, straightening the slightly rumpled shirt and running his hands through his hair, looking more unkempt and so much younger than she could ever remember seeing him. "So," he said with a cool, distracted smile that didn't at all cover up the exhaustion in his face, "you'll be wanting coffee, then?"

* * *

Tosh wondered if Ianto ever went home at all anymore. She supposed he wouldn't have much reason to, if he was sleeping at the Hub anyway - and not sleeping much, at that. She wondered if he ever went home that much anyway, even before Jack...

She didn't say anything for a week. If nothing changed, if he managed his work just as well as ever, what could she possibly _say_? Gwen would have confronted him, she knew. Gwen would have told him to go home and get an actual full night's rest, and threatened to _drug_ him if he wouldn't do it himself. Tosh wasn't Gwen.

But he just looked so tired, older and younger all at the same time, and finally one night, at four in the morning after the other two had gone home and Ianto quietly slipped past her desk, moving down toward the cells, she turned in her chair and said, "Ianto... are you alright?"

He stopped, and swung back to face her, a forced smile already on his face. "As... alright as any of us are. I mean, we're not exactly-"

"You look tired." She said it quickly, and then bit her lip as soon as it came out. She didn't mean for this to come out confrontational - on the other hand, she wasn't entirely certain he'd listen otherwise. "I'm just... I'm worried. That's all."

He shrugged. "We're all tired. More or less what you'd expect, when your leader-"

She cut him off before he could finish the sentence. She didn't want to think about that, and she doubted he did either. "You should get some sleep. I promise I'll wake you up if something happens. Even if I have to pour cold water on your head." She attempted a tiny smile that she wasn't sure reached her eyes.

Ianto didn't move for a second, didn't speak. He just watched her, looking like a shadow, or a man half-dead and refusing to admit there was anything wrong in the first place. Finally, he said, "Do you ever wonder how long we can do this? Do you ever wonder if-"

"He's going to come back." It was half assertion she wasn't even sure she believed, half simply finishing his sentence. "And until he does... we'll manage. We always do, don't we?"

Ianto nodded a little, and took a breath, and looked down. Tosh watched him for a moment, and then pushed herself out of her chair, lunged toward him and wrapped her arms around him and pretended it wasn't as much to reassure herself as it was for him.

"We've lasted this long," she said quietly, when she finally released him, before Ianto had a chance to react to the surprise and hug her back. "We're Torchwood. If we couldn't manage, we wouldn't be here in the first place, right?"

He smiled at her, still tired, but genuine at least, for the first time Tosh could remember in months. He took a step back, and fell softly onto the couch, and after a moment, Tosh sat down beside him, reaching out to take his hand. After a minute, or two, or ten, Ianto fell asleep on her shoulder, and Tosh smiled, pleased to find that the world didn't fall down around them after all, not just yet.


End file.
